The Fight for Freedom and the Fight for Power

Published:Volna, No. 9, May 5, 1906. Signed:N. L—n.

      Published according to theVolnatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1965,

      Moscow,Volume 10,

      pages383-385.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

NovoyeVremyaexposes. That newspaper, serving the government which
has in practice remained an autocracy, hurls a number of frightful charges
against our paper,[1]and warns the Cadets of the dangers the
proletarian class struggle holds in store for the bourgeoisie. Besides its usual
denunciations to the authorities, the arguments inNovoye Vremyacontain a number of points that are of vital, public interest..

“Arenot the Cadets ashamed,” asksNovoye Vremya, “to
represent social-revolutionaries [referring toVolna] as

’the vanguard in the struggle for political freedom’?

They are
nothing of the kind. They are not fighting for freedom, but for power, and as
against the old autocracy they are advancing their own sovereignty—the
sovereignty of the proletariat.”

NovoyeVremyais a faithful servant of the autocratic government. The
servant, in his master’s interests, is at pains to scare the bourgeoisie with
the spectre of socialist revolution. That is its first object. Its second
object is to depict the revolution now in progress as socialist: to confuse
“sovereignty of the people” with “sovereignty of the
proletariat”.

Itis no accident that the servants of the autocracy resort to trickery and
fraud to achieve these two objects. The servants of old autocracies have
everywhere and always resort ed to such fraud, and not only in newspaper
articles, but in all their policy.

Thatis why it is most important to examine the deception perpetrated byNovoye Vremya. First of all, we shall deal with the
“horrible” discovery that “they” are fighting,notfor freedom,butfor power. Let us see what this
means. People’s freedom can be ensured only when the people can really,without let or hindrance, form their associations, hold meetings, publish
      newspapers, make their own laws and elect and replace all officials in the
      state who are entrusted with carrying out the laws and administering the
      country on the basis of the laws. Thus people’s freedom can be really and
      fully ensured only when all power in the state really and fully belongs to
      the people. This is absolutely obvious; and it is only the deliberate
      desire to confuse the minds of the people that prompts such servants of
      the government asNovoye Vremya. It is this obvious truth that is
    established in the programme of the workers’ party. In this programme, thepoliticaldemands that are feasible in bourgeois society, i. e., a
    society in which the private ownership of the means of production and
    production for the market prevails, are head ed by the demand for thesovereignty of the people. Whoever fights for freedom for the
    people, but does not fight for the sovereignty of the people in the state,
    is either inconsistent or insincere.

Thisis how matters stand as regards the struggle for freedom and the struggle
for power, arguing in purely logical terms. In the history of the struggle for
freedom, the, position has always been that the people, in fighting for freedom,
at the beginning of their struggle receivedpromisesfrom the old
regime to the effect that it would ensure their freedom. Prompted by fear of
revolution, the old state power, which is independent of the people and is a
power over the people,promises the peoplethat it will ensure their
freedom. But its promises remain unfulfilled; they cannot be fulfilled in their
entirety so long as there exists a government which cannot be recalled by the
people. And so, at a certain stage in the history of all revolutions, a moment
arrives when the obvious logic of the foregoing argument penetrates the minds of
the broad masses of the people, under the influence of the lessons taught by
experience.

Sucha moment is also approaching in Russia. In its historical aspect, the
struggle in October 1905 was a struggle for a promise by the old regime to
ensure freedom. And a promise is all that the people have succeeded in getting
so far. But the numerous unsuccessful efforts to fight for some thing more have
not been in vain. They prepared the people for a more serious struggle. The
contradiction between thepromise of freedom and the absence of freedom, between the omnipotence of the
old regime, which conducts all affairs, and the impotence of the “people’s
representatives” in the Duma, who do nothing but talk, is now, precisely
as a result of the experience of the Duma, penetrating the minds of the masses
more and more clearly, deeply and sharply. The struggle for full power for the
people with the aim of ensuring full freedom for the people is approaching with
amazing rapidity, not only because of the subjective logic of our arguments,
but also because of the objective logic of political events. That is why a few
days’ sessions of the Duma were sufficient to cause a fresh breeze to blow. The
Duma is a splendid instrument of exposure, and it particularly well exposes
deceptive ideas about the power ofsucha Duma, about the value of
promises, about the usefulness of constitutions bestowed from above, or of
agreements between the old regime and the new freedom. And that is why signs of
a new and real step forward by the movement for freedom are revealing themselves
so early. The Cadet election victories at first turned everybody’s head. The
Cadets’ behaviour in the Duma is already causing their halo to fade. And
advocates of a compromise between the old regime and the new freedom are
losing, and inevitably will lose, their glamour in the eyes of the people as the
struggle for full power for the people, for full freedom for the people, draws
nearer.

[1]Volna(The Wave)—a Bolshevik daily published
legally in St. Petersburg from April 26 (May 9) to May 24 (June 6),
1906. Twenty-five issues appeared in all.